Extraction of messages from Outlook 97 .pst archive file [Outlook]

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From: Theodore Stathopoulos on 10 Feb 2010 09:46

Yes, it is an Outlook 97 .pst archive file and includes about 100 e-mail
messages which was the content of my Outlook 97 Inbox and which I archived
before I carry out my hard disk formatting and recovery process and now I
cannot extract because this archive .pst file can neither open or be imported
into the Outlook 2010 Beta version.

Oh my God! What shall I do now?

As for the Office 2010 Beta version that I have installed, thank you for you
advice but I will buy the Office 2010 retail version as soon as it is
released.

Best regards from Greece!

"Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

> "Theodore Stathopoulos" <TheodoreStathopoulos(a)discussions.microsoft.com> wrote
> in message news:0E287029-A725-4179-B512-B7A27B71AC58(a)microsoft.com...
>
> > I had been using Outlook 97 without problems almost exclusively for sending
> > and receiving e-mail and had never had any outgoing mail server
> > authentication problems.
> > My mail service is, by the way, provided to me through the AT&T Global
> > Network and it
> > seems that AT&T is one of the very few still remaining Internet Service
> > Providers whose
> > outgoing mail server does not require e-mail client authentication.
>
> For most of its mail services, AT&T uses Yahoo. You are lucky.
>
> > That's exactly what I do! I go to the backstage of Office 2010 by clicking
> > the file tab. I then click Open and subsequently Open an Outlook Data File
> > (.pst) in order
> > to open the Outlook 97 Messages.pst archive file.
>
> Are you using the main PST from Outlook 97 or an archive PST? It makes a
> difference.
>
> > However, when I select this .pst file and
> > click the Open button in the Open Outlook Data File dialogue box, the
> > following message
> > pops up:
> >
> > "You are about to add a non-Unicode capable store to your profile. This
> > store should not be used to store multilingual Unicode data. Do you want to
> > continue?"
>
> This is perfectly normal.
>
> > I click OK and then an account bearing the name of the .pst file, in this
> > particular case Messages, is created in Outlook 2010 but it contains only an
> > empty
> > "Deleted" folder and the messages of the Outlook 97 Messages.pst archive
> > file for some
> > unknown reason fail to be extracted.
>
> No account bearing the name of the PST gets created. Instead, you see the
> display name of the root of the PST appearing in the Navigation Pane. That's
> not an account.
>
> > Is there anything I can do to extract the messages?
> >
> > I should finally also note here that my Outlook 97 was part of the Greek
> > language version of Office 97.
> >
> > I would greatly appreciate a quick reply.
>
> Make sure you're opening the correct PST. Outlok 2010 can read an ANSI PST
> from Outlook 97 and you should be seeing all the data it contains. When you
> have added it to Outlook 2010, you can convert it to a Unicode PST by
> following the steps here: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ansi-to-unicode.asp
>
> Keep in mind that the currently available Outlook 2010 is still an evaluation
> copy and it will expire within the next year so unless you have a copy of
> Outlook 2003 or later, you won't be able to open any of the PSTs you create
> with it.
> --
> Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]
>
> .
>

From: Gordon on 10 Feb 2010 09:56

From: Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook] on 10 Feb 2010 10:05

"Theodore Stathopoulos" <TheodoreStathopoulos(a)discussions.microsoft.com> wrote
in message news:4AF82AB2-670A-43F1-B08D-EE7D529C5525(a)microsoft.com...

> Yes, it is an Outlook 97 .pst archive file and includes about 100 e-mail
> messages which was the content of my Outlook 97 Inbox and which I archived
> before I carry out my hard disk formatting and recovery process and now I
> cannot extract because this archive .pst file can neither open or be
> imported
> into the Outlook 2010 Beta version.

If you're speaking of "archiving" using Outlook's definitions, archiving in no
way constitutes a backup or even a faithful copy of your default PST.
Somethere along the way you used a method of transporting your data that
damaged the PST in such a way as to make it unusable. Since we don't know
exactly what you did, there's no good way to say what, but it doesn't really
matter anyway, since it's after the fact. Making a backup is useless unless
you can restore that backup. Always perform a restore to see if your backup
is faithful before trusting it so completely.

> Oh my God! What shall I do now?

I think you're screwed. Sorry.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]

From: Theodore Stathopoulos on 11 Feb 2010 16:59

As I have already written above, before the formatting and recovery of my
hard disk, I archived the

content of my Outlook 97 Inbox, which was a total of about 100 e-mail
messages that I had received, and

the result of this archiving process was the Messages.pst file.

All I did was that I subsequently copied this .pst archive file to a CD-RW
and after the recovery of my

system I copied it again from the CD-RW back to my hard drive, installed the
Office 2010 Beta version and

unsuccessfully tried both to either open or import it into the Beta version
of Outlook 2010.

From what you say and according to the fact that "archiving" in Outlook's
definition is not a back-up, I

now strongly believe that copying this Messages.pst archive file from my
hard disk to the CD-RW and back

again to my hard disk after the system recovery is what damaged the messages
included in this file and

cannot be extracted.

What do you think about it? Do you agree that this is an explanation for the
cause of the damage?

Regards!

"Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

> "Theodore Stathopoulos" <TheodoreStathopoulos(a)discussions.microsoft.com> wrote
> in message news:4AF82AB2-670A-43F1-B08D-EE7D529C5525(a)microsoft.com...
>
> > Yes, it is an Outlook 97 .pst archive file and includes about 100 e-mail
> > messages which was the content of my Outlook 97 Inbox and which I archived
> > before I carry out my hard disk formatting and recovery process and now I
> > cannot extract because this archive .pst file can neither open or be
> > imported
> > into the Outlook 2010 Beta version.
>
> If you're speaking of "archiving" using Outlook's definitions, archiving in no
> way constitutes a backup or even a faithful copy of your default PST.
> Somethere along the way you used a method of transporting your data that
> damaged the PST in such a way as to make it unusable. Since we don't know
> exactly what you did, there's no good way to say what, but it doesn't really
> matter anyway, since it's after the fact. Making a backup is useless unless
> you can restore that backup. Always perform a restore to see if your backup
> is faithful before trusting it so completely.
>
> > Oh my God! What shall I do now?
>
> I think you're screwed. Sorry.
> --
> Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]
>
> .
>

From: Gordon on 11 Feb 2010 17:10

"Theodore Stathopoulos" <TheodoreStathopoulos(a)discussions.microsoft.com>
wrote in message news:751DE29F-88EA-4811-9BDB-8F9D8E0FFF39(a)microsoft.com...

> All I did was that I subsequently copied this .pst archive file to a CD-RW
> and after the recovery of my
>
> system I copied it again from the CD-RW back to my hard drive, installed
> the
> Office 2010 Beta version and
>
> unsuccessfully tried both to either open or import it into the Beta
> version
> of Outlook 2010.

So what happened when you tried? Any error message?

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